ADBC has thrown down the gauntlet with this well chosen subject for this month's challenge.

"Anything people can come up with like tropical reefs, underwater creatures, wreckage, even cities.... Use as much Bryce as possible but postwork and imports are allowed."

**Sounds good to me.

****Good luck to you all. The Entry pages will be up shortly.

****The Deadline will be 12 NOON UK TIME June 30th 2010

Contestants are permitted only one (1) entry.**

**WARNING!!!!!  Anyone posting finished renders in the galleries before the end of voting will be disqualified from this challenge.

WIPS are fine as long as they are only posted in this thread.
**
The Rules Page can be viewed here:
The Rules

 sweeet! :D

I'm afraid I can't edit the headers to announce the challenge so the links to the challenge page will be posted here.

WIP Pics

I've made an underwater creature for the challenge - The Sea King. I used Curvy for the initial sculpt - took just over an hour so far.

Now I've got him in Bryce and I'm experimenting with materials and lighting. Lots more to add to this WIP :)

Outstanding work!

Fantastic!

Corrie

iggie my friend that is wicked! Love it indeed. Such a complex creature will be best served with a UV map that handles zones. Procedurals might however be good source images to apply to the map. Does this software deal with UV mapping or provide options for uv mapping?

Amazing acuatic creature ¡¡

@**rashadcarter UV maps are added automatically as you draw the objects. I would usually paint the texture maps in Curvy, but thought it would be fun to see how far I could get with Bryce procedurals instead.

I'm adding the background now, and feeling the render times as I experiment with lighting (slow)... I am used to Curvy updating in real-time fully shaded ;)
**

WIP: Added some more elements in Bryce. I am wondering whether to add a distant hazy landscape and underwater fortress - or leave it more graphic with the plain blue background.

  Bryce lighting and object selection is quite tricky:

• Can you turn off shadow casting for an object? (I had to render without my water surface to stop it shadowing the creature from the sun)
• is there a way you can make a selection from a list instead of trying to click in 3D? (When several lights and objects are overlapping I find it hard to choose the right one)

 If you want to select one item of a set of overlapping items, you can ctrl+click and you should get a list with all items that exist at the point where you clicked. you can then pick the one you wanted.

You can turn shadowing off i think.. you would need to do that in the material lab in the texture of the object that shouldnt do any shadow-casting.

I think adding somethin in the distance would be nice. something subtle to give an extra sense of depth...

http://www.freewebs.com/jabukanews/ThunderballCave-underwater.jpg

Like in the photo, you dont have much particularly defining shapes but it still gives some depth.

Another idea, since post-processing is allowed, you could render a depth-mask (which is pretty much like rendering the z-buffer to a greyscale image) and use it to apply some depth-based color grading.

And finally you could add hints of tiny fish swimming around here and there in the background, even if just two or three of them. It'd help bring a sense of scale (if the scene is scaled properly in general) and strategic placement in distance to the camera could also help enhance the feeling of depth.

Select the object, In this case your curvy model. In the materials lab, click the little triangle to bring up this box. Click to uncheck Cast Shadows, Receive Shadows, or Self Shadows. It's just like it sounds.

If you decheck Cast Shadows your curvy will not throw shadows on other objects like rocks or the floor.

If you decheck Receive Shadows your curvy will not be shadowed by anything else such as your water.

If you decheck Self Shadows your curvy's antenna or arm will not cast a shadow across the curvy body.

You might want shadows from somewhere else. It's possible to turn off cast shadows from your water instead of receive shadows from your curvy.

Thanks for the answers to my Qs - they will save a lot of time & frustration :) I've started reading the manual but got a bit overwhelmed by the length of it ;)

Iggie? Please don't use the 'm' word here. Thanks! ;-)

Hello to all, was just wondering where the entry upload page was for the contest considering only 11 days before deadline.I looked over entire forum with no luck.

Thanks in advance.

William

Please don't worry. Th entry page will be up in time to post before the deadline. At the moment there is a problem changing the information at the top of the page which is were I write the links for the challenges. This means I can't change anything. However, I will post a new thread with links to the challenge entry pages shortly.

Well okey dokey .....lol....just for the record , I was excited not worried  :)  ....Good luck to all participating.

I've added a shoal of fish and some distant landscape. This is another WIP - thought it would be good to continue the story in thread while waiting for entry page :)

The shoal was fun to make, I inflated a fish from a silhouette, made lots of copies and joined them together in Curvy, then warped the shoal as a single object - so it looks like the fish are twisting and turning together.

Entry Page is here:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/contest/index.php?contest_id=1162